Goal Setting: Would I Do This on Vacation?
By Tana M. Mann Easton, Lead Efficiency Engineer
On a recent episode of the Before Breakfast podcast, Laura Vanderkam was giving some tips on how to actually make your goals happen. Her first tip was to figure out if your goal is something you actually want to do. Are you intrinsically and realistically motivated to make this happen? She said a helpful question she asks herself to figure out if she’s truly motivated to set a goal and stick with it is, “Would I do this on vacation?”
Laura was on a cruise once, and in the captain’s opening remarks to the passengers he said, “All diets are officially kicked to the curb!” The crowd erupted in applause. There were probably many people on that ship who had goals to eat better, and some of those people were part of that applauding group of people who were ready to eagerly ditch that goal for the duration of the voyage. If you know you would be in the eagerly ditching cohort for the goal you’re wanting to set, then maybe this is not the year for you to realistically tackle that resolution. However, if the goal is so important to you that you can still see yourself carving out the time and other logistics to make it a reality even on vacation, then perhaps you are ready. If you would still do your clean eating on that cruise ship, then you are intrinsically and realistically motivated.
Many of us set New Year’s resolutions and promptly realize we’ve failed to make any progress come February. Instead of setting ourselves up for failure, Laura’s “Would I do this on vacation?” question can be a helpful gauge to see if we’re truly ready to add a new habit to our lives.
If you or your team would like to sign up for our 2 hour Balance and Productivity training to instantly double your meaningful output and find the feeling of lasting flow and optimized work life balance, please email me at tana@focustoevolve.com and say hello!
With Sincere Gratitude,
Tana at Focus to Evolve